Daily Archives: February 6, 2008

You might have heard the news that a Mississippi law maker wants to pass a law making it illegal for restaurants to serve food to clinically obese people. How stupid is this? I can understand wanting to help people lose weight because I am all for controlling issues of weight and any other unhealthy problem people may face. It doesn’t matter how unhealthy you are as long as you aren’t obese.

What I don’t like is the fact that they are going to go on looks alone to base this law. How about the skinny person who has a cholesterol level of like 350 and is sliding towards a heart attack shouldn’t they be kept from the trough as well? They are just as or unhealthier than the obese person yet it is OK as long as they are skinny. No matter that the plate of greasy burger and fries is the last straw and he or she walks out of the restaurant and drops dead of a heart attack. Who should be to blame for this?

What about the bulimic person who may be thin but due to the binging and purging they are extremely unhealthy. Should the restaurant not be helping to feed this unhealthy eating disorder by supplying them with the food they want to binge just so they can go home or somewhere else and purge it out somehow? Is the restaurant supposed to be able to deny helping them become even unhealthier even though they look normal and healthy?

Should the tanning shops now deny tans to those super tanned individuals who are ruining their skin and will undoubtedly have skin cancer in the future? Should every industry that might be aiding and abetting some behavior that could possibly lead to unhealthy outcomes be charged with regulating the persons partaking in it? What about football and the Super Bowl? They just came out with statistics that show that people are prone to stress related heart problems from watching the games. Should we now have a health screening for those who wish to watch the game live or in a pub etc.?

The problem is we can’t regulate what people do when it is legal for them to do it. This law maker is making a lot of assumptions about the people who are obese. The assumption is that the people are fat due to chronic over eating and that is it. What about the people who have glandular problems such as PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and endocrine problems such as thyroid conditions, parathyroid, pancreas, adrenal, pituitary and hypothalamus problems, diseases such as Cushing’s disease and lastly a plethora of certain drugs such as antidepressants and anti-seizure just to name a couple.

Yet we are going to trust whether or not a person is just a fat slob who is killing themselves with food to some waitress, waiter or greeter at a restaurant. The bill was authored by Senator W.T. Mayhall, Jr. Now this senator supposedly has a background in medicine which makes me ask the question how he can make such a stupid bill which certainly won’t help. At best it will be another way to subjugate people, obese people.